Australasia's home for timber news and information

Steep learning curve at HarvestTECH 2015

harvesttech

Analysis by Future Forests Research indicates that the proportion of the forest harvest from steep hill country in New Zealand (over 20 degrees slope) is currently 44% of the total wood harvest. Source: Timberbiz

This is forecast to rise to 53% by 2016 and to over 60% by 2025. Nationally over the next 12 years there is a requirement for a new cable harvesting crew every four weeks.

Harvesting on steeper slopes presents a range of challenges. Choosing the right equipment requires careful consideration by harvesting contractors.

HarvestTECH 2015 will be run in Rotorua for Southern hemisphere forestry companies and contractors to provide direction and information.

In addition to the very real issue of improving safety and communications for contractors working on this steeper terrain, new technology developments, cost, productivity and the environmental impacts of working on this country needs to be carefully weighed up.

More than 430 forestry managers, forest owners, harvest planners and harvesting contractors from throughout New Zealand, Australia, Chile and North America attended the region’s first Steep Slope Wood Harvesting conference that ran in Rotorua, New Zealand.

It ran in conjunction with the very popular and first Forest Industry Safety Summit. It was the largest gathering of its type in the region.

New Zealand companies are leading the development of some of the new equipment and practices needed to extract wood from steeper slopes.

Some of the innovation is coming from the larger equipment suppliers working with those on the ground. However, much of the innovation is coming from contractors working together with local engineering companies.

The speed of change and range of innovations developed over the past two years has been immense, such as grapple-equipped hauler carriages, tethered “winch assist” machines, new wheeled harvesters, remote controlled mechanical tree felling and robotics, automation and image processing that’s being integrated into new machinery.

The Forest Industry Engineering Association (FIEA) will be building in the very latest developments from the US, Canada, Chile, Brazil, Australia, Europe and South Africa – where keen interest is been shown on what’s already been achieved by innovative equipment suppliers and local contracting companies.

Further details on HarvestTECH 2015 can be found on the event website, www.harvesttech.events